Elpidia Carrillo

Elpidia Carrillo (born August 16, 1961) is a Mexican actress and director. Her career includes roles in both film and television. Internationally she is best known for supporting roles in Predator, Bread and Roses, Nine Lives and Blue Beetle.

She was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award for Best Female Lead for her performance in Salvador. She is known for the role Tecuichpo in the independent film The Other Conquest.

Carrillo was born in Parácuaro, Michoacán, Mexico, on August 16, 1961. One of eight children in a family of farm laborers, her childhood was marked by violence and poverty. At the age of three, her father was murdered, forcing her eldest brother to assume responsibility of the family. Wanting Carrillo to get an education, he forged a birth certificate so she could begin first grade at age four.

When she was six, her brother was shot outside a theater and the family faced constant threats to their lives. When she was ten, Carrillo moved to Uruapan with an older sister where she dropped out of school as she began working alongside her sister at a Chinese restaurant.

Carrillo was discovered by a local photographer in Uruapan, Mexico and soon received a modeling contract. At 12 years old, director Rafael Corkidi cast Elpidia as Malinche in the surrealist Mexican feature film Pafnucio Santo. The film was Mexico's official submission to the Academy Awards that year, but with its many esoteric elements, it failed to garner a nomination. Due to the role involving nudity and her being under age, Carrillo was credited under the fake name Piya. Corkidi cast Carrillo again for a larger role in his film Deseos.

By the age of 16, she had shot her first lead role in the controversial Mexican feature Nuevo Mundo, directed by Gabriel Retes. Having worked numerous films, she decided to enroll in the Bellas Artes School in Mexico City.

After numerous Mexican and International film and television credits, Carrillo's US film career quickly emerged as she did a series of critically acclaimed roles in award nominated US projects. Her first US film came when Academy Award winning director Tony Richardson cast her in a co-starring role in the film The Border opposite Jack Nicholson and Harvey Keitel. That was soon followed by a co-starring role in the Beyond the Limit opposite Richard Gere, Michael Caine, and Bob Hoskins, with the latter two receiving BAFTA Nominations for their performances.

For her third US film, Carrillo performed a small supporting role in another successful Academy Award nominated art film Under Fire for which Gene Hackman's performance received a Golden Globe nomination.